One step forward, two steps back.

It has been confirmed that he politicians in South Africa has an agenda. Unfortunately their agenda is not in line with the lip service that SARU has been feeding supporters about focusing on getting the springbok team back to the top.

Last week SARU announced that they will be head hunting for the position of National coach for the Springboks and that their priority was to get the best man for the job. Well we have heard that before and ended up with Pieter de Villiers who under the circumstances of not only being undermined by Regan Hoskins when it was announced that Peter de Villiers was not appointed for rugby reasons only, did not do entirely badly during his four years. That’s if you ignore the fact that he did inherit a world cup winning squad and kept them largely intact for the four years of his coaching stint.

In a news article two weeks ago this was what sports minister Fikile Mbalula had to say.

Sport quotas are exhausted and have generally been counter-productive, Sport and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula said on Wednesday.
Quotas were introduced to achieve the goal of integration but this had yet to be realised, he told a media briefing at Parliament on the ministry’s “transformation perspective document”.
It was necessary for the country to be strong in terms of sport development, and for this a national development plan was required.
“There is slowness [in transformation] because there is no agenda,” he said.
“People complain. They moan about a whole lot of things, about transformation… but everyone needs to be speaking about transformation knowing what is the plan.”
Mbalula said there was an over concentration on three major sporting codes – cricket, soccer and rugby.
What happened in netball, basketball, amateur boxing, or even boxing itself, among others, appeared to be “none of our business”.
“You will be interested to see that in most of the sporting codes in our country, if you do an examination, we’ve achieved maximum transformation there, and through the quota system, among others,” he said.
“And I think transformation must not only be measured in terms of the top three commercial [sport codes]. It must be measured across in terms of sport.”
Sport was about talent, and not a question of electing people to achieve representivity.
The key question was whether there were developmental programmes to nurture players. If blacks did not play rugby, were there programmes for those that did play to be nurtured, guided, and off-loaded into the system so as to ensure representivity?
“So how are we going to achieve that? We are saying this transformation must be narrowed down to a score card… [for] the different federations,” Mbalula said.
“Secondly, there must be a binding transformation charter.”
Without a strong developmental approach, there would not be black players making the national team in the future.
“Because when we go to a World Cup, we’re not going to select a person simply because of colour,” Mabalula said.
“We want the best in the World Cup… nobody wants to be a failure because of ‘I’m here just to add up numbers of black people’. We are there because we want to compete.
“At the end of the day, I don’t want to be a quota player. I want to be there on merit and I want my talent to be recognised.”
There were many black players who wanted to play rugby. The question was why were they not finding their way through in the different competitions.
This was one of the issues the national sport indaba would look into in Midrand next week, Mbalula said.

After the final day of the National Sport and Recreation Ndaba, this was what came out of it.

It was too early to scrap quotas in South African sport, Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula said on Tuesday.

On the final day of the National Sport and Recreation Indaba in Midrand, during discussions on transformation in the plenary, it was decided that the quota system could not be scrapped while the transformation charter and the transformation scorecard would be adopted into the Nation Sports Plan.

During the final session of the transformation commission, where the resolutions were to be passed, there was widespread division on whether the system should be scrapped or reinstated.

“The indaba acknowledged the challenges and limitations with regard to the implementation of the quota system in its current form and the negative effects of this system in deepening racial polarisation,” Mbalula said.

“To this end, the indaba observed the unfortunate and painful stigma imposed on young black athletes and players as a result of the application of this archaic system.”
With the rigorous debate surrounding this contentious issue, it was decided that the quota system would not be scrapped, and the merit system would also not be undermined.

“However, a strong case has been made for the uninterrupted continuation of the quota system through the direct selection of black players into national codes, using the adopted scorecards contained in the transformation charter,” Mbalula said.

“You will still have that particular programme [quota system], but at the same time that programme will be enhanced by a visible and clear transformation charter.
“Federations and everybody else will be held accountable in terms of what we seek to achieve as a nation about integration, equity and accessibility in terms of different sporting codes.”

Rugby in particular came under fire, with SA Rugby Union (SARU) president Oregan Hoskins defending his federation.

Hoskins admitted the sport had not progressed as much as it could have in terms of transformation, but he invited more black people to get involved in rugby.
“It will not help to talk only in this forum. I also experienced the worst form of apartheid and the fact of the matter is that I am democratically elected [as SARU president],” Hoskins said.

“So I urge my comrades with the expertise to make yourselves available to the rugby unions and SARU to have a say.

“To effect change in rugby we have to start in the boardroom because, as you know, most of my brothers in rugby are white.”

Hoskins said he would seek clarity from Mbalula and the Sports Ministry as to what had been decided regarding quotas.

“We have heard the decision and that is contrary to what the Minister had said earlier – that quotas had been done away with,” Hoskins said.
“The indaba has decided that quotas should not be done away with, so we will meet as SA rugby to discuss the effect of what has happened here.”

To me the picture is clear, the sports minister has decided that the responsibility of developing rugby amongst all communities is not theirs and that rugby on a professional level will have to sacrifice quality and competitiveness ahead of transformation.

The fact that the government has not as yet realised that grass root development start at schools and cannot be funded by SARU is frankly a joke. What they really want the professional franchises to do is take the handful of quality non white players at their disposal and fast track them into these teams, ignoring the fact that to have rugby representative of the nation comes from enough numbers participating in the sport at grass roots level.

Only if government can bring to the table enough funding to build facilities and get enough teachers in these previously disadvantaged schools to embrace the sport, will there be enough players of all colour who will get through the system on merit.

Alas this is just another farcical day in politics in South Africa. It seems to me at least that for every one step forward, we will always take several steps back to address the balance.

I have always found this quota thing to be very poor to be honest. I have always thought that Black South Africans prefeered football over rugby and cricket and that is plain to see when you look at the percentages of the 3 national sides colour.

Funding should be done at a schoolboy level and should be the responsibility of the government but just how far do you go? Are you going to invest alot of money to set up junior rugby training in areas where maybe only 5 or 10% of the people are interested in rugby and vice versa?

eirebilly, the Eastern Cape is the breeding ground for non white players and has a proud rugby tradition. The governemtn should start there and make sure every school has the facilities to accommodate rugby at school level.

The private schools in SA are doing what they can, but there are not that mnay and will not bring sufficient numbers to the table.

You are right about what do you do when a small percnetage of them are actively interested in rugby, but the sports minister does not care about that. He really doesn't give a $h1t whether the participating numbers are on par, it is all about who earns the money in professional sport.

I know the eastern cape has a proud tradition in rugby and its there that the government should be focusing on. Thats because there is a large percentage of people playing ruby there.

I really do hope that something is done but SA really should stop trying to overcompensate for things that happened in the past and look to the future. Quota's are not and never have been the answer.

So do high schools in SA have rugby pitches or is that only in private schools?

Just wondering cause though rugby's only played in GPS schools, private public schools, back home, most school have rugby pitches, even though it'll be league pitches, but at least we're all used to the oval balls.
And in most parks you'd find footie being played amongst friends, even though it'll be league.

I'm not think it is to do with money, but if it is not common amongst the ordinary schools then kids won't be introduced to the game at an early age.
Sure money at an adult age counts, just see back home where we lose our better athletes to Rules and League, but if it is not a well known game at lower school level then the better sportsman will lean towards the more popular sport, which I guess in SA will be soccer?

OzT you see the problem in Sa is that becuase of not only Apartheid, but also tradition different groups play different sport.

Soccer is by far the most popular sport amongst blacks.

rugby union has always been the number one sport for Afrikaners.

As for schools, you have to look at it from those two perspectives. All afrikaans and English schools have rugby pitches and most of the cshools play rugby. The previously Black schools have little facility for sports, and even soccer is mostly played on bare land.

Even in the townships these blacks have little facility for sport.

That is why governemnt has a big task ahead admittedly, but they haven't really done anything in the past 18 odd years.

There are a big number of schools that are now integrated and the numbers are still more dominated toward white kids, so the black kids that go to these schools do get exposed and most of them do enjoy rugby and cricket, but they are still in a minority.

The numbers are in the townships and that is where no development has taken place.

If these kids do not get exposed to the sport you will never have representation.

"If these kids do not get exposed to the sport you will never have representation."

There I think lies the crux of the problem, have to make the sport more popular somehow.

I had a 3 week rugby tour of SA in 1998 when i was 16, blydi loved every minute of it. Though it was a big eye opener, huge differences between the haves and have nots.

All the schools we played only had one or two coloured players, which is what i expected.

But we did play a township team from tigerburg (I think thats what it was), dont think they kicked once, they ran the ball from everywhere. We beat them, but as a bunch of welsh boys we pride ourselves on our singing but we couldnt hold a candle to them.

Good times